How to drive more sales from your online catalogue

Your online catalogue is a great way of displaying all of your products so that your customers and potential new clients can see exactly what you’re selling. Not only that, the design of your catalogue will really enforce your brand and it will help people to remember you. Online catalogues are a very important marketing tool, and when done correctly they can really enhance your business and they can bring you in a number of new purchases.

When you are using an online magazine maker , it is important to remember that the end goal is to make sales. Of course you want it to be very aesthetically pleasing to attract in the initial attention, but you’ll always want to consider drawing people in to buying what you have on offer. When you create each and every page, the sale needs to be at the back of your mind, and it might be a good idea to do some testing to see what people think of your product afterwards, to see if they would go on to buy.

Here are some essential items that you will need to include on your online catalogue, to encourage readers to purchase:

  • Images – a picture really is worth a thousand words, and if people can see what they’re buying, they will feel much more confident in taking that step. Hubspot has discovered that 34% of marketers include images as their most important advertising content, and when you consider that ads with images get 94% more views, it’s easy to understand why. Just ensure that the images are right and that they have been taken in the best light by a professional – if they look ugly, people will be much less likely to buy.
  • Description – but an image isn’t enough. You will also need to include some sort of description to give people that extra boost of confidence. You will need to include everything that is relevant and that people will want to know, because if they need to contact you to find out what they want to know, chances are they will lose interest.
  • Links – you need to include a hyperlink to your online shop, and preferably to each and every image. This extra time and effort will increase your sales revenue tenfold because it makes it so much easier for the reader to buy. People can be very lazy and easily distracted when online, and they might not put in that extra time and effort to search for each individual item afterwards.
  • Buy buttons – you can even go one step further and include a direct PayPal buy link within the pages of your online catalogue. This will keep people looking at your images, and may even lead to them buying more!
  • Sign up form – remember your readers might not be in a position to buy right away, but you don’t want that to deter them from your products, so you will want to include a newsletter sign up form so that you can reach them later on.

You will also want to ensure that your online catalogue is fully visible on all search engines, as this is the way that new customers will often find you. This means that you might want to do some research into search terms that relate to what you’re selling, so that you can make sure that your catalogue is included in that.

You can even think about pay per click advertising – in which you pay search engines to boost your post to customers that are searching specific terms, at an advertising budget that you are comfortable with. Of course, with this sort of thing, the more that you put in, the more you will get out of it.

And here are some other tips to draw people in to what you are selling:

  • Find social media influencers – look at people that have a huge following which includes your target demographic on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send those people free samples of whatever it is you’re selling, and hope that they will comment on it in a positive way, which will lead other people to your products.
  • Contact bloggers – you will also want to have a look at prolific bloggers that have a solid following. Getting them to run a review or promo of your products will draw in brand new people that otherwise wouldn’t have found you.
  • Encourage your social media followers to share – often the best way to do this is by running a competition for people who share, like, and comment on your photo. This will work in a similar way to word of mouth, and it can spread like wildfire.
  • Try affiliate marketing – you can extend this sharing from your current customers from trying affiliate marketing. This involves getting other people to make sales for you, and giving them a percentage of each sale made. They will do a lot of advertising, extending your reach even further, in ways that you might not have even considered, for a small reward. Find out more about it here.
  • Check out the competition – it’s always good to be aware of what your competitors are doing online, especially when it can give you ideas on how to be successful and how to be even better. See what social media channels they get a lot of response from, see what marketing techniques are the most successful, and do it bigger and better.

Online magazines and publishing are a brilliant way to get sales – as long as you remember that is the primary reason for you doing it. Sometimes, people get so involved in the creative process that they forget to actually get people buying what they’re selling, which is a huge mistake. Looking good is very important, but so is making money. If you don’t make any profits from your marketing efforts, then they are a waste of time, effort and money.